


someone in between

by nickybottom



Category: The Prom - Sklar/Beguelin/Martin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 23:09:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16417802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nickybottom/pseuds/nickybottom
Summary: she's not herself, she's not what they want, but alyssa greene just wants to be free.





	someone in between

**Author's Note:**

> wrote this in two days while procrastinating on studying for multiple exams and constantly listening to the first bway preview audio which probably explains why this is a mess. things:  
> 1\. mr. hawkins adopts every fucking kid kicked out of their house (or leaving their house) and that's the tea sis!  
> 2\. i can't let emma and alyssa be together forever. i'm sorry, that's just. that's not my speed.  
> 3\. i have no idea how housing for columbia works! i got denied there, so i never really had to look it up!

Alyssa Greene applies early decision to Columbia.

Alyssa Greene gets in, early decision, to Columbia.

Her senior year is is one big magic trick—stay alive, not get kicked out, and hold out, because in nine months, six months, four months, she’ll be out, she’ll be gone, she’ll be free.

It sucks that Alyssa’s shitty at magic.

But she gets there. End of senior year, one more big hurdle, and it’s the biggest of all—the prom. Get through this, she thinks, and you’ll be gone. New York in four months, and no more mom on your back or Emma making so many damn assumptions about your life and how “perfect” it is. Get through it, follow the plan, and get gone.

The plan falls apart. Alyssa and her mother both know about it by the first prom, the one they exclude Emma from. The way her mother looks at her, says, “Like a _normal_ girl,” and suddenly Alyssa’s spiraling and panicking in the car, trying not to show her fear. She can see everything falling apart around her, so quickly.

And then Kaylee and Shelby—the cheerleaders, it’s always them, they can always find a way to ruin her life—reveal that they know. They know everything. And the spiraling, she’s there, and Emma’s yelling at her to come out, to come out to everyone and “follow the plan” and no, no, this was not her plan. It was never supposed to happen like this.

After the prom, she avoids everything for a bit. The world doesn’t need Alyssa Greene in that moment, it needs a bunch of Broadway actors to save the world and little Alyssa Greene can fall between the cracks for a couple days. Until Emma says that she wants to go public, and makes more ugly accusations, and Alyssa Greene is back in the spotlight, but she doesn’t want it.

She steps to the side, gets broken up with, and waits.

Columbia is three months, twenty seven days, and she’ll be gone. Never have to speak to Emma again, never have to think about Edgewater, Indiana and the horrific prom incident of 2017. And then just four more years after that, and she can never speak to her mother again.

At some point in the mess of it all, she wanders into Mr. Hawkins’s office. Well, not wanders in, walks in, because she’s Student Council president, and she still has her responsibilities, even if her world is falling apart. 

He still smiles at her, still asks how her day is, and there’s a part of her that wants to crumple right there, tell this man who was fighting his mother constantly that she wanted to give up and run away.

“Oh, I’m good! A bit stressed, with college stuff, and,” she glances away, “all the stuff with my mom.”

He nods, says, “Yeah, I get that.” and they’re back to regular discussions—she has to choose a successor, because in three months and twenty six days, she’ll be out. And they settle on Erica, a junior who is one of the best in her class and reminds Alyssa too much of herself.

And just before Alyssa leaves, Mr. Hawkins asks, “Have you seen the video that Emma uploaded?”

She’s not sure how she feels about Emma as a person. She’s not sure that she needs to know about the video. She still shakes her head, still comes over, still watches it.

Still cries when she watches it.

It’s probably around the part where Emma’s talking about how they had to hide where she starts sobbing, and Mr. Hawkins looks at her, and she knows that he knows, and he knows that she knows that he knows, and he asks, “Are you okay? Has she hurt you?” with a fierceness in his voice that she’s never heard from him.

(Except maybe in the background of the phone call during the prom incident, but she doesn’t really remember that night in detail.)

She can’t tell him the truth. She knows that. And so she doesn’t. But he sees through it, and he says, “Do you need help? There is support here, Alyssa, for abusive parental figures. And we can report her, even if you’re eighteen—”

“No. This is between me and my mom, Mr. Hawkins.” And it is. This is their issue, and she has to deal with it herself.

“The rest of the world has been brought into it, Alyssa.” he gestures at the video. “Your mother is the reason behind this. And it was your fight at a point, but there are people who can help you. _I_ will help you.”

She nods, wipes her eyes, and gets up. “Thank you. But no. I appreciate it, but me and my mother have to go through this alone.”

And she walks out.

(He watches, thinking about how he could have said more, could have said everything.)

Three months, twenty four days, and she hears that there’s going to be a new prom. They have someone _rich_ , she hears Nick say while she walks past. And she knows.

She skips class that day, forges a doctor’s note and walks out (calligraphy class was not something that her mother should have signed her up for.) She knows what needs to be done. Talk to her mom, come out, go to that stupid second prom, and get out of here in three months.

Her mother refuses to listen, instead going to the gym, trying to fight, and—

“I love you, Emma Nolan!”

She notices her mother stepping towards her, and suddenly she has a whole group of people, the actors and Mr. Hawkins, surrounding her. The one, Barry or whatever, says something to her mom, and her mother says, “We’ll talk tonight,” and she leaves.

Alyssa Greene plans to never go back. Well, sneak in once, get her shit, and run.

Three months, twenty three days, and twelve hours until Columbia, and she’s sneaking in her window, the same way that Emma always planned to, with suitcases and a bus on idle outside. There’s a guy—one of the “Godspell Kids” who comes in with her, to carry shit, and help if her mom goes off. As they climb in, he says, “I took karate for twelve years.”

Alyssa smirks and grabs her sabre from where she keeps it in the closet. “I’ve taken fencing for nine years. I think I’m fine.”

The jokes make it easier to ignore what she’s doing. She packs up her clothes, her laptop, her various chargers, her make-up bag, the polaroid camera that Emma got her for Christmas, the things she’d bought for Columbia, and some of the smaller stuff she has hanging up. She looks around, checks the checklist, and looks at the one thing that is left, looming in the corner, as it always has.

She knows her mother is awake downstairs. She has to be. But she’s quiet, and she’s smart, and she’s learned how to sneak around in this house. Until she doesn’t need to.

She hands the Godspell guy her stuff, he takes it out, and asks her if she’s coming. She makes one final check, before grabbing the electronic scale, yelling as loud as she can, “FUCK YOU, MOM!” and throwing the scale at the wall.

And she runs. Climbs the ladder, hops into the bus, and is greeted by the actor sitting next to Mr. Hawkins yelling, “BOOK IT, TRENT!” and watching her mother stare at her as she leaves.

There’s a part of her that feels bad, like she just quit something that she needed to finish on her own. But there’s another part of her that is breathing for the first time.

There’s a third part of her that’s already on her bank account, making sure her mom can’t access it anymore. And changing all of her passwords on social media, and making sure that as an 18 year old, she can leave. Which she can.

And then she realizes. “Uh—where am I staying?” Because fuck, she didn’t think this through well.

Emma and Mr. Hawkins look at each other, seemingly having an argument just through their eyes. Eventually, Emma looks away, and Mr. Hawkins clears his throat. “You can stay with me for as long as you want to.”

There’s a part of her that wants to live with Emma, but there’s a part of her that knows that it wouldn’t work out, that the moment she gets to Columbia, she’s breaking up with Emma. The moment she touches ground in New York, she’s a new person, as far away from Edgewater as she needs to be. So she smiles, says, “Thank you, Mr. Hawkins!” and lets herself breathe for the first time in eighteen years.

When her mother slams the door to Mr. Hawkins’s apartment the next day, yelling about how she _will_ sue him, he looks at her and grins. “That’s that, I guess!” and she feels bad, but she knows that her mother can’t do anything, really. Amy Greene is all bark and no bite, unless it has to do with hurting Alyssa.

* * *

She speaks at graduation—elected student speaker for the top female academic achievers. It’s easy; thank the teachers, thank her fellow students, don’t even bring up The Prom (now capitalized in her mind, now something bigger in her mind) and everything that happened. Get the diploma, walk off the stage, take a cute picture with Emma, a couple pictures with the actor crew, and one with Mr. Hawkins. Ignore the yelling from her mother.

She does almost turn her head when she hears Amy Greene yell, “ALYSSA GREENE, GET YOUR ASS OVER HERE,” but no. Not anymore. She’s Alyssa Greene, and she doesn’t have to listen to her mother. She walks to the car, grins at Mr. Hawkins when he asks how it was, and listens to him talk about how he might move to New York to be with Dee Dee.

She wouldn’t mind that, to be honest. Dee Dee already said that Alyssa could live with her, knock off the fees that weren’t covered by Columbia’s “pay for the whole of your financial need” thing. And Mr. Hawkins is a decent enough roommate—he cleans his stuff up, he knows when to leave her alone; the singing along to the Swallow The Moon soundtrack is a bit annoying, but it's bearable. And the way he looks at Dee Dee, like she's the sun and the moon, is honestly adorable. So she says, “That would be super cool!” and he smiles at her, and she realizes that maybe she can't leave everything behind when she goes to New York.

But she can still leave one thing behind. Emma's going to some tiny school in the Midwest—some lame little town, just like Edgewater, where everything fell apart when the refrigerator factory left, or something like that. Edgewater 2.0, really.

She talks to Emma on the last day before she leaves, and they agree. The relationship can't last. Alyssa thanks her for everything (even though Alyssa did it all herself) and Emma does the same (because now she's internet famous, all because of Alyssa and her mom) and they part ways with a wave and a tension that will never really be dissolved.

But New York is looming, and she and Tom are almost gone. The apartment is packed up, Trent's been hired at James Madison, and Dee Dee has a role starring in the new revival of Titanic. Everything is good. Five hours, and her mother won't be an issue, it'll just be Columbia and grades and fitting in.

Alyssa looks at Edgewater, Indiana one last time. It was a mess of a town, with a load of shitty memories that she didn't have to think about anymore. And she was finally just Alyssa Greene, not some mess of a human being trying to meet the standards that the shitty town tried to push on her. Columbia is four hours, fifty-eight minutes, and approximately 12 seconds away, and Alyssa Greene is finally happy.

**Author's Note:**

> pour one out for the swallow the moon bootleg! fuck second acting, we stan a bootleg watching king around here! also the school emma's going to is very politely implied to be the school i am attending, because you know. i don't fucking know colleges.


End file.
